Day 17 - National Poetry Month 2015 - Sing That Poem!

Happy National Poetry Month!

Welcome to Day 17 of this Year's Poem Farm Project!

Find the Complete April 2015 Poem and Song List Here

First, I would like to welcome all old and new friends to The Poem Farm this April. Spring is a busy time on all farms, and this one is no exception.  Each April, many poets and bloggers take on special poetry projects, and I'm doing so too.  You can learn all about Sing That Poem! and how to play on my April 1st post, where you will also find the list of the whole month's poems and tunes as I write and share them.  If you'd like to print out a matching game page for yourself, you can find one here, and during April 2015, you'll be able to see the song list right over there in the left hand sidebar.

Yesterday's poem was Memories.  Here is the tune that goes along with it, below. Did you figure it out?

Margaret Simon's students from Caneview Elementary in New Iberia, Louisiana, have done it again!  You can listen to their strong voices singing about that old barn.  Thank you, singers!

And here, below, is today's poem.  Look at the song list in the sidebar or on your matching form to see if you can puzzle out which tune matches this one.

Freedom

by Amy LV

Students - Today's poem does not have much of a story behind it other than it began with some notebook writing.  I knew which tune I would write to because I knew that we were lucky enough to have guests with the same tune here today. But which topic should I choose?

I wrote about a few ideas in my notebook, and some were too silly for today's rhythm and song.  I adore this tune, and I wanted to write something worthy of it.  I hope I did.

Today we have a special Poetry Peek from Joy Keller's fourth grade poets Brooks Hill Elementary in the Fairport Central School District in Fairport, NY.  These students have been researching oceans, and they used their research to write a class song...to the same tune as my song for today.  

Taking information and restructuring it into the rhythms and lines of a poemsong is a complex task, and these writers did a beautiful job here. This might be something that other classes wish to try.  It's a glorious way to culminate a unit in science or social studies.  And when you read this poem (and tomorrow, listen to these students' singing voices), you will feel that you are in the sea. 

Thank you so much for sharing your song with us today, students.  It's a treat!  Welcome to teacher Joy Keller and her fourth graders.

We began by brainstorming a list of topics that had to do with the ocean (the water, fish, ocean mammals, etc.), and then the kids grouped themselves based on which topic they wanted to write about. Each group wrote a stanza. We talked about syllables and emphasis, but most of them just felt when they got it right by repeatedly singing it! We finished with a discussion about the order in which to put the stanzas and--voila!--we had our poem.

I think the trickiest part was that everyone kept singing the tune of "You are My Sunshine" instead of today's secret tune so that we messed ourselves up. I asked my musician husband why this was happening, and he gave me the very technical answer of "They're kinda alike at the beginning." :)

The Ocean

by Mrs. Keller’s Fourth Graders

The ocean’s turquoise, with bubbles floating,

There’s emerald seaweed, with ruby coral.

With pearls in clams and some diamond seashells,

Barnacles cling to opal rocks.

From the sunlight zone down to the twilight zone down

To the midnight zone down to the abyss,

From the abyss down into the trenches,

Those are the levels of the sea.

There are the mammals that live in oceans,

They have to come up for a breath of fresh air.

The whales have blowholes that spurt out water

Dolphins and seals will splash and play.

Fish breathe through their gills, and swim in schools,

And they have scales, and they have fins.

Sharks have sharp teeth, and the sailfish swim fast.

Tripod fish even walk around.

Deep in the ocean, strange fish are glowing.

Most fish down there have bioluminescence.

Bioluminescence is like a bright light bulb—

That’s what helps fish to catch their prey.

Invertebrates live down in the ocean.

They don’t have backbones, but some have hard shells

Like jellyfish and lobsters and crabs and

Octopi squirting out black ink.

Don’t throw your garbage into the ocean

You’ll hurt the fish and you’ll cloud the water.

The dirty bottles and destructive poisons

Can really ruin our gorgeous seas.

Robyn is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at Life on the Deckle Edge. Have fun feasting on the poems all day, all week long!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

Baby Cereal and Fourth Grade Poets

Yum!

by Amy LV

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Today's poem is an older one, and it's from a whole collection of baby poems that I have written.  Since Mark and I have three children, we have lots of baby stories, and for a time, I thought that I might join my baby poems together into a book.  Now I don't think so.  I am working on different projects, and so the baby poems are sitting and waiting for another day, another month, another year.

You may have noticed that every line of today's poem begins with the same word.  I got the idea to try this from a poem titled Good Books, Good Times!,  from a book by the same name, by Lee Bennett Hopkins.  There's another interesting technique to notice too, another idea I learned from Lee's poem.  Can you find it?

To write this little poem, I used Lee's great poem, "Good Books, Good Times!" as a mentor poem.  This is a great thing to do.  Find a poem you love, notice something you find interesting about the writing, and then try that interesting thing yourself!  Stand on that poet's shoulders to attempt something new.

Today I am happy to host fourth grade teacher Nathan Monaco and his students from the Arcade Elementary in the Pioneer Central School District.  I thank them for sharing their poetry unit journey.  Welcome, Nathan and students...

This year my 4th grade classroom had fun with an author study unit about poetry using Amy VanDerwater’s writing.  She was generous enough to allow me to use her poetry and her artwork from The Poem Farm as freely as I wanted.  The unit wound up being 3-4 weeks long, and I combined Amy’s poetry with other themes I had learned about through writer’s workshop.

Aiden's Notebook

At the beginning of the poetry unit, my students were less than enthused to say the least.  They shared their malcontent about poetry in general and basically summed it up as boring.  I let them know that they had not been taught poetry by me yet and that they were going to be learning about a poet who they had never heard of.  Each student received a bound copy of a book that my teaching assistant and I had made.  This book contained some of Amy’s poetry split up into sections according to the "technique" sections (line breaks, question poems, mask poems, personification, etc.) on The Poem Farm website.

Before delving into the different types of techniques, my class spent one week learning about the 5 Doors of poetry by Georgia Heard, using each door to think about poems by Amy.  If you have never heard of Georgia Heard, she has a book titled Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School where the idea of the 5 Doors comes from.  

Available through Heinemann

I spent one day on each of Georgia Heard's doors:

• The Heart Door – things that you love, things that are important to you

• The Memory Door – memories from your life: happy, sad, funny, etc

• The Wonder Door – things that you are wondering about, questions you have

• The Observation Door – things that you observe in the world around you

• The Concerns About the World Door – things that concern you, or things that you are thinking about for the world, issues in the world.

One could also invent/introduce all kinds of other doors such as a humor door, but I decided to leave that out as 4th graders can take that too far and ruin the whole mojo of taking poetry seriously.

Day 2 - The Wonder Door

by Evelyn

Day 2 - The Wonder Door

by Gabbie

After the week of comparing Amy’s poetry to the 5 Doors, we were ready to explore her techniques as described in her website.  We read her poetry aloud, discussed why her poems were organized in such a way, patterns the students saw, and of course we talked about the importance/unimportance of rhyming in poetry.  Only one technique was talked about each day, but we kept track of the different techniques on poster boards in the room.  If students were compelled to continue working with one technique, I allowed it, and as the unit went on there was always a technique that a student felt comfortable worked with.  The class spent one week on the different techniques as well.

Week 2 - Personification
by Cheyenne

Our  last week of this unit was spent publishing through a company called Studentreasures, a company that binds student work in hardcover for free.  The actual publishing process for the company is a little tedious, (it took a whole week to publish poetry), but it was completely worth it.

Published Book Cover
by Andrew

Published Inside Book Page
by Marissa

We completed our unit in late March/early April.  Now, in the beginning on June, I still have students choosing to create poetry during writer’s workshop time.  Some students have even created poetry journals, and I would be very confident saying that all students thoroughly enjoyed the poetry unit.

Thank you again to Nathan and his fourth graders for sharing their journey today.  I feel lucky to have had my poems included as part of their study.

All best to all of you for a beautiful week full of poetry and adventure!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

To find a poem by topic, click here. To find a poem by technique, click here.

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